Electronic messages, such as email, have become a prevalent means of sending and receiving information. Such information may be contained in an email message itself, as well as in an electronic document or file included as an attachment to such an electronic message. Senders of email messages often include electronic documents and files attached to email messages, and electronic documents and files attached to email messages often include metadata such as Macros and/or VBA code which can be used to hide, install, and run harmful scripts on a computer when the recipient opens the attachments. Such metadata in email attachments may pose certain security risks and concerns to recipients of email.
One conventional means of screening inbound emails with attached electronic documents has included the use of spam or junk email filters. The use of spam filters, however, often results in recipients failing to review emails and electronic documents due to their spam categorization and relegation to a spam or junk folder. In addition, while various antivirus software products such as Norton Antivirus™, McAfee™ Anti Virus Plus, Barracuda Web Filter, and Stanford Anti-Malware provide a certain level of protection to email recipients, such products do not provide for the removal of metadata including VBA code which is not considered malware by itself but can be used to camouflage and hide malware in electronic documents attached to inbound emails. There is also the need to inspect the attachments to detect the metadata and to provide the recipient with a report on the metadata found in the inbound attachments.
Thus, current products do not provide enough versatility and convenience for efficiently detecting, reporting, removing and cleaning metadata from inbound email attachments. For example, conventional systems do not analyze incoming emails for attachments containing metadata and clean such metadata from attachments before the incoming emails arrive at an email exchange server or arrive at a user's email inbox. Conventional systems also do not generate reports to recipients on detected or removed metadata from inbound email attachments. Nor do such systems allow for an interface that permits users to set email attachment metadata cleaning options for inbound emails, including designating predetermined types of metadata for removal or reporting and designating processes for the review of inbound email attachments.
Accordingly, there is a need for systems and methods that provide greater versatility and convenience for detecting, reporting, removing and cleaning metadata from inbound email attachments.